The Boy that you loved is the Man that you Fear
by Alice Liddell
Summary: Just read... It is a work in progress, so remember that when reading it...


The freezing black rains of a bleak and bellicose autumn day began to take form in the gray skyline which seemed to stretch to the had there been such a malignant feeling of foreboding in the air before. It was is the angels themselves were trying to grant the world a warning about the coming events. But no one seemed to have been listening, a mistake that they would pay dearly for.

And so it was that on a bleak day of dark tidings a young boy came to be enrolled at a decrepit and depressed old school on the outskirts of Gotham City. From the day that they first saw him, they knew they wouldn't like him. There was a certain way about him. He was nothing like them in any way.

He was tall and lanky and had an ambiguous, effeminate build. They watched in silence as the boy crept slowly down the halls of the old school, holding books tightly against his chest, like they were the gateway to a heart he wanted no one else to view. He dragged his tiny feet across the decrepit floor as if he lacked the strength to take any measure of a full step along its uneven surface and he was hunched over the books as if to protect them from the gaze of the unforgiving school itself. And his eyes, such pitiful and sad little eyes barely visible through dirty drab and dark locks which encompassed his face like the long legs of a spider. They were the color of a merciless and unrelenting sky as it shed its sorrowful tears to reign down upon his face. He wore them wide open in a frightening gaze that seemed not fixated on any one of them, but rather beyond them. Focused on the path that lay ahead.

The poor boy wore a mournful look of sorrow upon his brow. He appeared to them as if he were about to cry at any waking moment, as if he was prepared in advance for tragedies yet to pass. And as he drew near, they also became keenly aware that he was also very visibly trembling. Though he was thoroughly soaked through from exposure, they were able to ascertain for themselves that this which ailed him was not brought on by the cold which permeated his icy exterior and caused him to shake so; it was the sort of trembling initiated only by, and which seemed to indicate the presence of great fear.

"Can you tell us your name, sweetheart?" a woman had inquired of him. She sat behind the confines of a rather large steel and wooden desk. This was to be his teacher. And those before him were to be his class. The woman's voice was comforting yet sincere, but he took no notice of this because his mind was elsewhere.

The wind was making its presence known by wailing long and loud, and this helped take him away from where he stood, far be it only for a brief, fleeting moment. Though there was a whole classroom before him, his gaze was fixated low and left, looking at the cracks in the dirty floor which seemed to reach out of an intermittent epicenter like ripples through a half-hearted web of deceit. By all outward appearances he still seemed rather timid and sad and he was still wearing a bitter frowning upon his face. "Jonny, honey; won't you introduce yourself to the whole class?" the woman spoke once more from behind her desk, ruining his train of thought. But still the young boy held his tongue and let no words escape the unbroken seal of his lips.

"What's the matter, sweetie, can't you speak, or haven't you learned to yet? You do know the kindergartners are right down the hall, don't you..." a young girl's voice in the cold room cut through the eerie whole room before him echoed in the quiet but resonant and cruel laughter which ensued behind her words. They looked at each other, eyes ablaze with a naive sense of malice and they covered their cruel little mouths with their hands in order to hide the disdain which seeped from their hearts like a toxin, but it was far too late; the damage had been done. The whole school was laughing at him, or so he felt. And this served only to add to his misery and his sorrow but also, unbeknownst to them, to his sickness as well. The ailment that ate away at his very soul. As the laughing continued unabated, he withdrew increasingly into the sanctity of his own mind as he felt something inside himself collapse and fall into pieces which collected at the base of his fragile mind.

And with a tiny and barely audible whimper, he buried the vulnerabilities now clearly evident in his face behind the books and he started to weep, his mandible trembling ever so slightly as he bit down hard on his lips in an attempt keep himself from crying out. They had crossed a threshold from which there could be no returning from. As he reacted to their malice, he wondered, almost in passing, if any of them were even acutely aware of what was going to happen now as a result of their childish ignorance. He opened his arms like the gates of hell themselves and he let the books escape his grasp and collect upon the floor before his feet. It was as if the black gates to his heart had been explicitly opened so as to let the school gaze into the darkest layers of his inner workings. But soon they would come to wish that they hadn't. The laughter died down as the mood in the room changed. And as the sun disappeared, tucked once more behind black clouds of contempt, the room grew increasingly darker.

From their vantage point the boy still appeared to be crying, as his tears were still falling from his eyes and collecting upon the surface of his books and of the floor before him. But also, there appeared to be blood gathering in this dark place as well, where he had bitten down so hard on his lips so as to release the bitterness that was trapt inside his mind. Lest it be released like a great torrent before it's righteous time had come. They couldn't see his eyes, as his gaze seemed fixed on his feet, which were angled in an inward inclination giving him a most unusual posture. His arms hung limp by his sides but his hands were clenched into vice like fists as he was leaned in a slightly inwardly lean. He wasn't moving, not even to breathe, as he appeared before them. They were already starting to regret their actions previous, but it was far too late for sorrows. It was as if the faint reality that they so desperately held on to was starting to fall away, and they didn't like where it seemed almost inclined to take them. Now they were starting to feel something new as well, swelling with their regret; fear.

"Why are you all laughing at me, do my mannerisms amuse you?" the words seeped from the boy's lips, more statement then question and so softly and subtly but with undertones of bitter mental anguish. It was the first that they had heard of the boys' voice, and it only served to add to their discomfort and the feelings of ill will they felt for him. He scared them, even if only a little for the moment, and they loathed him for it.

"John, could you, uh, could you just go and sit down now,sweetheart?" the words which escaped the teacher's lips were spoken in a hushed tone and were so nearly whispered that they almost drifted by the boy's ears without him ever even taking notice. Where she sat at the very least offered her some measure of comfort in the fact that his attention seemed primarily fixated upon the classroom before him and fully away from her. She felt relatively secure in this knowledge. And after a few moments of hesitation, the boy came down from his thoughts to gather the fallen books he had so eagerly allowed to escape the tight embrace of his arms.

"My name is Jonathan, by the way…" more words from the boy's curled lips, directed this time at the teacher. She caught the words unexpectedly and jumped in surprise when she came to the realization that they were meant for she also felt a sense of relief when she realized that he used a more indifferent tone when addressing her. He rose from the lowly place that he had been hovering over and he started the long walk past those who would torment and belittle him so that he may take his place in a lonely seat at the back of the classroom. Their eyes were burning holes through him with every step that he took as he passed them, one by one. He slid through them along the way, never speaking a word to anyone of them. And they, for their own part, spoke no words to him along his way either. His own gaze still seemed primarily fixated on the cold ground that he walked across, and the books once again found their rightful place held tightly against his chest, like the gates that shielded his heart had found themselves once more closed to the innumerable cruelties of the unrelenting outside.

"Class, this is Jonathan Crane. He's new here and I want you to be very nice to him, okay?" the teacher spoke sincere words to the silent and made self aware class. Perhaps it was her that the boy had most frightened. Though he had unnerved them all, they viewed him first with eyes of disdain. Even while sitting down isolated at the back of the classroom, he still seemed to be watching the ground as if he was waiting for something to happen, which meant that they still couldn't see his eyes and he still held the books close to his heart, not even bothering to put them away. It was as if he could not stand to be without them. But they were aware that he was still crying because they could still hear the sobbing, and they watched as the blood and the tears fell like a dead rain against the bare of his books.

"Hey, are you new here?" a young girl whose voice was still in his mind from her earlier taunt was speaking to him. He wasn't paying her any mind though as his own thoughts were far too preoccupied with something else. "Hello? You _do_ speak English, don't you?" shell teased him still.

"Emily, just stop it already" someone in the background muttered to her. Now the boy knew the name of his first target.

"Leave me alone…" the words escaped from bloody lips and landed themselves on deaf ears. She hadn't really even heard what he had said, or at the very least, it hadn't yet registered for her. Instead her attention was now drawn to his hand, where a long and frail little finger was tracing out what appeared to her to be little horseshoes, drawn in his blood across the surface of one of the books. This served only to unnerve her further, after all, who took pleasure in playing in their own blood like this? Foolish, ignorant little girl. If only she knew that what he had actually taken to drawing across the bare of his book was the Greek symbol for "Omega", the end of things. But had she known that, she would have been perturbed. Bad things were about to start happening in the old school…

… To be continued….


End file.
